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There was no WWDC ticket for me this year, but it was still a very enjoyable and busy week for James Dempsey and the Breakpoints. Here are some of the highlights from last week in San Francisco.

(Interested in the soon-to-be-released James Dempsey and the Breakpoints album?Sign up for email updates so you don’t miss out on the fun!)

NeXTEVNT Cartoon Art Museum Fundraiser

In its third year, this fundraiser celebrates the heritage and history of NeXT, featuring black hardware as well as OPENSTEP and NeXTSTEP running in virtual machines. Even more fascinating is meeting up with folks who lived and breathed this platform from its early days—building apps with the frameworks that would evolve into Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.

As part of the evening’s entertainment, we played a short set of songs in support of the Cartoon Art Museum. If you are a fan of any sort of comics, cartoons, animations and the like, check it out next time you are in San Francisco. If you couldn’t attend the event during WWDC, you can still donate or join as a member.

My badge from NeXTEVNT 2014 Cartoon Art Museum fundraiser

Breakpoints Jonathan Penn and Victor Alexander joined James for a short set at the 3rd annual NeXTEVNT fundraiser.

LIVE near WWDC 2014

We had a great time on Wednesday night at 50 Mason Social House. The house was packed as Breakpoints from six different cities in five different time zones across two continents took to the stage to perform a show chock-full of Cocoa-inspired songs.

The talented Mr. Pasco also played electric guitar on that modern tale of momentary loss and redemption, Almost Dropped My iPhone. Conditional Breakpoint Uli ‘Object Alloc’ Kusterer (@uliwitness) of Elgato joined in with The Liki Song chorus. And of course, slide-advance keyboard legend Victor Alexander (@victoralexander) was on hand to keep that space bar hoppin’.

Thank you to all of the Breakpoints and also a big thanks to: Luke Scholefield (@lukescholefield), Adam Tow (@atow) and Rae and for taking photos and video; Daniel Steinberg (@dimsumthinking) for recording sound off the board; and James White (@thecolourfool) for running the merch table.

(For more fantastic photos of the show—check out Adam Tow’s photo journal.)

Finally, an enormous thanks to everyone who came out to the show — your support is what keeps this going. We had a great time this year and hope you all did too!

The spot where Victor Alexander worked his slide-advance keyboard magic.Photo by Adam Tow

The Breakpoint Horns in their debut appearance! —Sam Davies on trombone and Daniel Pasco on trumpet.Photo by Adam Tow

Ben Scheirman about to launch into the last song of the show, ‘Hold Me, Use Me, Release Me’.rPhoto by Luke Scholefield

It’s the ‘Designated Initializer’ not Khan that got the better of James.Photo by Adam Tow

A Look Back at Alt Conf

On Friday, I presented A Look Back—the closing session for Alt Conf 2014. With the surprise announcement of Swift earlier in the week, the talk took a look back to the beginning of the Objective-C era at Apple, tracing how technologies of that time have evolved into the environment we use today. To accompany this look back, the talk also featured the first public preview of tracks from the soon-to-be-released James Dempsey and the Breakpoints album.

James wraps up AltConf 2014 with ‘A Look Back’Photo by Daniel Doubrovkine (@dblockdotorg)

Thank You

The technology announcements of WWDC 2014 will have repercussions for us as iOS and Mac developers for many years to come.

Beyond learning about new technologies, the week gives us a chance to gather together and talk, to share ideas, some laughs and perhaps one too many drinks.

Thank you so very much to everyone who came out to see the talk and performances. Your support and feedback is greatly appreciated and means a lot to me—it was fantastic to meet so many folks this year.

With WWDC 2014 now in the past, it is time to turn my attention to finishing up the album and getting it out into the world. Someone we are all familiar with said “Real artists ship” and that is my next order of business. •

(Interested in the soon-to-be-released James Dempsey and the Breakpoints album?Sign up for email updates so you don’t miss out on the fun!)

When James Dempsey and the Breakpoints play live near WWDC, sometimes things progress beyond the sweet sounds of nerdy, nerdy music.

Last year, a new event appeared on the conference schedule—WWDC After Dark. A little investigation turned up some interesting results, which, judging from the audience response, the crowd thoroughly enjoyed.

As we get ready for this year’s big show on Wednesday night, June 4th (Full Show Details Here), here’s a little bit of fun from last year’s concert.

James Dempsey and the Breakpoints will be performing Live Near WWDC 2014 on Wednesday, June 4th at 7:00 PM.

The show is just a few blocks from Moscone West at 50 Mason Social House. Admission is free—no cover charge and no ticket required. We provide the music, you buy the drinks.

Join fellow iOS and Mac developers for an evening of humorous and informative songs including favorites such as Hold Me, Use Me, Release Me; I Love View and Model View Controller. And don’t miss the live performance of our latest song, ripped from the headlines, Goto Fail.
(View Full Show Details and Map Here)

Night Of A Thousand Breakpoints
(Well… at least four or five)

This year, the show features a lineup of Mac and iOS indie developer luminaries and maybe even a special guest or two. The Breakpoints include:

They will be joined by the incomparable Victor Alexander (@victoralexander) on slide-advance keyboard.

The joint will be jumpin’ at 50 Mason

No WWDC Ticket Required

The show is open to all—no WWDC ticket required—making it a great event for all developers in town for the week. There’s not even an NDA, so tell your friends and come on out to James Dempsey and the Breakpoints, Live Near WWDC 2014. •

In some ways, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has not changed very much since the first one I attended in 1996. The format is essentially the same. The conference kicks off with a keynote followed by a week of technical sessions, labs and evening events.

But the last few years have brought a major change that has caused me to reshape how I think about WWDC, and unfortunately, how to live without it.

Since the inception of WWDC, if you were a dedicated developer for Apple platforms, you were at the conference. And, up until 2011, if you considered attending WWDC to be a must-have part of being an Apple developer, you had at least a week to get a ticket. If you were reasonably vigilant, you were in.

But in recent years, with the demand for tickets far outstripping supply, you can’t think about WWDC as a must-have part of your life as an Apple developer. By necessity, you have to think about going to WWDC as a nice-to-have. That is a big change.

Once something changes from being dependably available to rarely available, you begin to form alternate plans and take alternate paths.

Not whining—just reality

First, I want to be clear that this is not a complaint. I think it’s fantastic that there is so much interest in the platforms that I enjoy using to build apps. But a new reality has arrived and so I needed to adjust.

Last year, I spent WWDC week in San Francisco without a ticket. I had an enjoyable and productive time last year and so I’ll be up in the city again this time around as well.

So how has a long-time DubDub-er been dealing with being outside the building? Read on…

Beyond WWDC

One key was thinking about what WWDC provides and figure out how to meet those needs in some other way. For me, that boiled down to:

Sessions

Labs

Social Events / Networking

Sessions
I find sessions to be a very valuable part of WWDC. Especially for a new technology or API, that session often provides not just technical information, but also some insight into the philosophy behind the technology, which does not always make its way into formal documentation.

Last year, Apple did an amazing job of posting session videos the same day of the presentation. I hope this year to be the same. [WWDC 2015 Update: Apple will be streaming select sessions each day, in addition to releasing session videos]

In fact, watching session videos at home or in a hotel room is arguably a better experience than waiting in long lines and sitting in tightly-packed conference chairs. Last year, for instance, instead of getting up early Monday morning and standing in a giant line for the keynote, I slept in and watched the keynote from my hotel room.

Plus, I didn’t feel guilty that I was somehow ‘wasting’ my ticket by not being in the building.

So, for sessions, I am completely at peace with not being at WWDC. Apple has done a great job of making the technical information from the conference rapidly available.

Labs
Labs have always been one of the most valuable aspects of WWDC. They provide developers with sit-down consultations with Apple employees. There are three types of labs: Technology Labs, the User Interface Design Lab, and the App Store Lab.

In the Technology Labs, you can bring your code and talk one-on-one to Apple engineers (often the very engineers working on the technology you are asking about).

Unlike session presentations, labs do not scale well. There are only so many engineers and most of the year they are doing engineering, not manning labs.

As a substitute for Technology Labs, consider using Tech Support Incidents. You receive two as part of the yearly $99 developer program fee—additional incidents are available for about $50 each.

With a Tech Support Incident, you can ask a code-level question that is answered by a Developer Technical Support (DTS) engineer. I’ve talked with folks who have used the service and they report good results overall. One caveat is to not expect an immediate answer, researching and replying to your issue can take a few days.

Using DTS is not an exact substitute for sitting down face-to-face with an Apple engineer, but it is a reasonable and more scalable substitute. (You also don’t have to wait until WWDC to ask your question.)

As far as I can tell, however, there is currently no substitute for the User Interface Design Lab or the App Store Lab. These resources seem to be exclusive to WWDC.

In my first year as an independent developer, sitting down with someone at the App Store Lab clarified a number of things for me. I found that brief interaction to be very valuable.

It might help developers to have the ability to get these sorts of consultations done outside of the scope of WWDC. I would be willing to pay for support in a manner similar to DTS to get these additional services during the year. At present, though, you need to make do without these two labs.

Social Events / Networking
Apple sponsors its own WWDC events such as Stump the Experts, the Apple Design Awards and the Bash—but there have always been a myriad of outside parties and events during the week. With so many developers converging on San Francisco without a WWDC ticket, it seems that number has grown in the past few years.

Last year, I found that there were plenty of events and parties that did not require a WWDC ticket, and this year seems to be shaping up the same way.

During the day, AltConf is a free conference with speakers all week, right near WWDC itself. Last year it was a great place to see some live sessions, meet up with folks and hang out in their lab. In past years, some local developers have also opened their offices up as gathering places during the week.

The evenings are filled with enough events and parties that there is at least one app and one website for tracking them. [Update: These have yet to be updated to show WWDC 2015 events, I would imagine that would happen in the coming weeks or days.]

My personal favorite event during the week is, of course, the James Dempsey and the Breakpoints show. For the last two years, we’ve had a lot of fun playing a free, full concert of iOS and Mac development tunes to packed houses.

PLUG: This year, on Wednesday night during the conference, James Dempsey and the Breakpoints will be LIVE near WWDC 2015. Sign up for email updates for forthcoming details about the show, new songs and recordings.

From a social perspective, there is a lot going on WWDC week that does not require a ticket. Last year, I definitely felt my need to network and talk with others was very fully met.

Wrap up

Being prepared for life without WWDC is the new reality. Both Apple and the development community have provided resources to make a WWDC week an enjoyable and productive time to be in San Francisco, even without a ticket.

I’m looking forward to being up in the city for the week. If you come to town with or without a ticket, please say hello if you see me and come on out to the show! •

Update Jun 9, 2013: Daniel Pasco will be joining the Breakpoints on trumpet and guitar!

I’m excited to announce that James Dempsey and the Breakpoints will be performing Live Near WWDC 2013 on Wednesday, June 12th at 7:00 PM.

The show is just a few blocks from Moscone West at 50 Mason Social House. Admission is free—no cover charge and no ticket required. We provide the music, you buy the drinks.

Join fellow iOS and Mac developers for an evening of humorous and informative songs including favorites such as Hold Me, Use Me, Release Me; I Love View and Model View Controller. And don’t miss the live performance of our latest single, that modern tale of momentary loss and redemption, Almost Dropped My iPhone.

The joint will be jumpin’ at 50 Mason

Night Of A Thousand Breakpoints
(Well… at least five or six)

This year, the show features a lineup of Mac and iOS indie developer luminaries and maybe even a special guest or two. The Breakpoints include:

They will be joined by the incomparable Victor Alexander (@victoralexander) on slide-advance keyboard.

No WWDC Ticket Required

The show is open to all—no WWDC ticket required—making it a great event for all developers in town for the week. There’s not even an NDA, so tell your friends and come on out to James Dempsey and the Breakpoints, Live Near WWDC 2013. •